Korean lulz of the day: my director thinks I’m fat.
jgh2:
I had to get another health checkup today because my health checkup last week was just a drug test. So they weighed me, lol.
Right afterwards my director was like, “It’s OK, you can lose the weight quickly in Korea, Americans eat a lot of food.”
I think I’m supposed to be offended, but the cultural difference from America - where a boss could be fired for saying such a thing! - really just made me lol.
The thing about this country is, if you don’t just laugh it off, and instead expect everything to be the way it is back home, you will be disappointed. It’s a completely different culture!
So she got me some “weight loss tea” on the way back. Hopefully it dosen’t contain ephedra. Haha.
“The thing about this country is, if you don’t just laugh it off, and instead expect everything to be the way it is back home, you will be disappointed. It’s a completely different culture!”
This is really important. I’m really glad that you have such an open mind after being there for such a short time. Many people are there for much longer and still don’t get it. You seem to be adjusting very well!
To be overweight in Korea must be a nightmare. I remember when Jared, who is not fat at all, was going to start working for a new elementary school and our director told him to get a hair cut (reasonable), to buy a suit (less reasonable) and to lose some weight (totally unreasonable). In the states, that is a goddamn winning lottery ticket. You can retire on the kind of money that will bring in. There was a time in class when a particularly annoying and most likely insane older woman was telling me about how in Korea, when a girl is fat they call her “raddish calves”—i can’t remember the word she used—and the pointed to a girl who couldn’t have been more than 17 or 18 and said “like her”. Bear in mind, the radishes in Korean are of the enormous daikon variety. Think of an eggplant, like the size of, well, your calf. There was also the time I showed a picture of my friend passed out with a flower pot over his head. Never mind he was asleep on a porch with a giant bowl for growing house plants resting on top his log-sawing cranium, all they said was, “he’s so fat!”. I can remember spending an entire lunch explaining to one of my female co-workers that if I told a girl in the states she was chubby, I’d likely end up getting a wrap in the mouth. To her, it just meant cute. There was another time I saw what had to be the most over weight person in Korea sitting on the subway. He was surrounded by elderly hikers who I could have sworn were planning a trek up his north face.
Like the posts above make clear, things are way different over there. To comment on someone’s physical appearance, height, weight, whatever, is totally accepted.
